The Sugar Cube

The most consequential moments of our lives are often the ones we barely notice. A child standing in line at a small town library doesn’t know he’s part of a public health victory. He only knows someone handed him a sugar cube.

In 1962 (ish), my mother took me to the Carnegie Library in Plainville, Kansas to receive the new oral polio vaccine. I remember a nurse squeezing the dope into a sugar cube with an eyedropper. I don’t remember anyone protesting outside, demanding medical freedom, or debating whether Jonas Salk or Albert Sabin had hidden motives. I do remember a line of parents with kids my age, all there for the same reason.

Nobody wanted polio.

It’s remarkable how completely that fear has vanished. That’s the thing about successful public health. When it works, it erases its own evidence. My generation grew up hearing stories about kids in leg braces, iron lungs, and parents terrified that a fever might become something much worse. My son’s generation knows polio only as a chapter in a history book. That’s not an accident. That’s science doing exactly what we hoped and expected.

Which brings us to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

If someone had told me a generation ago that an outspoken vaccine skeptic would become Secretary of Health & Human Services, and begin reshaping American vaccine policy, replacing members of scientific advisory committees, questioning long-established childhood immunization recommendations, I would have thought no way would we elect a president who would appoint such a wackadoodle.

Yet here we are.

c. Wikimedia Commons

Kennedy isn’t wrong about everything. Childhood obesity and chronic disease deserve scrutiny, and his willingness to challenge food manufacturers infuses some accountability. But there’s a huge difference between questioning institutions and undermining confidence in one of medicine’s greatest achievements.

Vaccines don’t just protect the kid receiving it, they protect the premature baby down the block. They protect the child whose chemotherapy has compromised an immune system. They protect the elderly grandparent whose immune response has waned. The vaccine is more than medicine. It’s a promise that we will look after one another.

That’s a concept our society seems to struggle with these days and it boggles my little Jones Generation mind. We’ve become remarkably adept at viewing every issue through the lens of personal liberty. Rights matter. They always have. But so do responsibilities. The sugar cube in Plainville wasn’t simply about protecting me. It was about protecting Rooks County.

The tragedy is that vaccines have become victims of their own success. Because most young  parents have never seen a child crippled by polio or blinded by measles, those diseases feel theoretical. And if you don’t get past the first thought, they’re easy to second-guess.

The old Plainville Carnegie Library is long gone. The sugar cubes, too. What remains is a question my generation never imagined: After eliminating some of history’s most frightening childhood diseases, are we now willing to gamble that they won’t come back?

I remember the sugar cube – and the confidence that, when it came to protecting children, facts mattered more than factions. I remember the twin pillars at the entrance to the library. Looking back, they seem to symbolize something larger. Faith in science and each other. Parents trusted doctors. Doctors trusted decades of research. Neighbors trusted that protecting children wasn’t a partisan cause, but a shared responsibility.

Maybe that’s what I miss most.

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in The Manhattan Mercury, and he seeks the second thought as host of ‘Within Reason,’ Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN.